1. Field of the Invention
We disclose a system whereby software piracy can be deterred while copying and purchasing can be encouraged. User to user copying plays an important positive role in the present system, and in the shareware industry, and as “piracy” it plays an important negative role in other shareware- and internet-based marketing schemes. The present invention discloses methods whereby software copying and purchasing can be tracked, studied, and rewarded, and methods whereby software lineages can become adapted to their environments.
2. Introduction
In an increasingly wired world, software can be reproduced and distributed worldwide, in minutes, and at little cost. For intellectual property vendors, these economies are problematic: freely copyable software typically gives customers little incentive for payment, and it positions piracy as the path of least resistance.
We disclose here a method for piracy prevention and purchase encouragement without loss of copyability. The system gives vendors round-the-clock and round-the-globe vending and fulfillment services, as well as secondary and tertiary sales from copied software. And the system gives users convenient access to digital products which might otherwise be less readily available, lets them try before buying, provides incentives for purchasing, and rewards them with increased benefits minutes after they decide to buy.
As disclosed, the basic idea is to “lock” selected features of a digital product such that the password required to access those features is unique to a particular product and context, and such that the password can be instantly and conveniently purchased and acquired by telephone, email, modem, etc. Users can thus evaluate locked products in their still-locked “demo mode” and unlock them in minutes. Vendors can encourage customers to pass copies on to other potential customers, because when the context changes, SoftLocked products automatically revert to demo mode.
Using this system, intellectual property owners can allow their products to be freely redistributed without losing control over their conditions of use, and without foregoing the ability to demand and receive fair compensation.
The Importance of Reproduction
The dynamics, “flow,” and reproduction of software through the information marketplace is not well understood, in part because it is difficult to study. Yet it is of significant economic and scientific importance. User-to-user copying, software reproduction, “Pass-along”, etc., plays an important positive role in our system, and in other shareware- and internet-based marketing schemes. Unauthorized software reproduction (“piracy”) costs software producers billions of dollars annually, and discourages the release of other digital properties. More generally, social scientists have long recognized that the spread and evolution of reproducible patterns of information (variously known as “memes”, “culturgens”, etc.) is the very essence of culture and cultural evolution. The internet is a recent and arguably revolutionary new arena in which such processes occur with unprecedented speed; methods for investigating and exploiting this new information ecology are therefore sorely needed.
Software marketing, and the study of the information economy would also be greatly enhanced by a system which tracked the flow of copies from person to person and from computer to computer. The ability to track “chains of copying” would aid the investigation of suspected piracy, the study of data flow through unregulated and/or unmonitored digital systems, and auditing of service providers, the exploration of marketing and advertising strategies, and the implementation of multi-level marketing schemes which pay commissions to individuals whose copying and distribution efforts result in increased sales, etc.
It is not difficult to imagine that a piece of software could track its own “travels” from person to person and from computer to computer, for as used here “software” refers either to executable programs into which self-tracking algorithms and technologies might be embedded, or data documents designed for processing by an executable programs, into which self-tracking algorithms and technologies might be embedded.